2010 At Occipital: Arrival at the Launchpad
Occipital has grown up a little bit since August 2009. We had survived 2009 by running on fumes and building a shiny stage-1 rocket booster called RedLaser. Back then, we were happy that RedLaser had been installed on 95,000 iPhones. RedLaser has now been installed on over 2 million iPhones. The growth was pure word-of-mouth (see the Newsweek article about it written by Vikas from November 27 2009.) And as we recently reflected with UX Magazine, we learned that user experience was tantamount to success.
2010. We spent the early months of 2010 supercharging RedLaser. We added data feeds, local results, new barcode formats, and we licensed RedLaser’s technology to 70 companies including Target. Apple featured RedLaser in a TV ad which premiered at primetime during Lost, scanning a bright red Gaggia Espresso Machine.
It was around this time that we realized RedLaser had outgrown our basement office. Occipital is fundamentally a computer vision technology company, but we had transitioned to spend most of our time fueling a large-scale mobile commerce tool. We started laying the groundwork to scale RedLaser up and away from our core engineering focus, and it was around that same time that we started kicking around ideas with a little company called eBay that just happened to specialize in large-scale mobile commerce tools, which brings us to today’s announcement.
Today we’re announcing that RedLaser has been acquired by eBay, Inc. We are confident that eBay is a truly better home for RedLaser than Occipital. Not only will RedLaser continue to thrive (now free for the first time on the App Store), but we’re also excited to report that the RedLaser SDK and all of the companies it supports will continue and expand under eBay. If you’re wondering, Occipital remains a freestanding company and we will not be moving over to eBay. eBay has an entirely new team running RedLaser.
Tomorrow. We’re really just getting started. Remember, we were just on the crawler with our partially-completed rocket. We no longer have our stage-1 rocket booster, but we have something even better in the works – a stellar engineering team:
Robert Grant, a Computer Science master’s alumnus from the University of Michigan, joined the team on February 18 as Occipital’s first Computer Vision Engineer. Since then, Rob has been leading development for Occipital’s next major release, which begins our steps down the path of creating a human-computer interface that blends seamlessly with human vision, which will be Occipital’s primary focus for the foreseeable future.
Rémi Chaignon, currently working in Paris, is starting remotely in July as our first Augmented Vision Engineer until he will join the company in Boulder this October. Rémi worked at the University of Teeside on the fundamentals of an Augmented Reality Game engine dubbed GEAR.
Shaun Werkhoven, the most recent to accept our invitation to join the team, has a PhD in Computer Vision from the University of Newcastle. Shaun, who currently resides in Sydney until his trip to Boulder next month, deeply studied Interest Points as applied to object recognition and 3D reconstruction for his thesis. Shaun will play a crucial role, applying his research knowledge to more optimally help us solve problems as a Computer Vision Engineer.
Without a doubt, this is the most exhilarating time in company history. We’re looking forward to the formal launch of Occipital now that we’re refocused on what we do best as a company – computer vision, and we can’t wait to watch as eBay accelerates and improves RedLaser with a new dedicated team.
If you haven’t already downloaded RedLaser – it’s free today.
Great job guys! Way to do it your way!
Todd Vernon
23 Jun 10 at 8:47 pm
Congratulations gents. Well deserved.
Dave Amirault
23 Jun 10 at 8:49 pm
Congrats guys — nice work!
Grant
23 Jun 10 at 8:50 pm
So proud of you! You deserve all the success in the world.
Walls for the Wind
23 Jun 10 at 9:07 pm
Awesome! Great work Jeff, Vikas, and the rest of the team!
Kevin Owocki
23 Jun 10 at 9:13 pm
Fantastic news, guys!
And I'm really excited to see what you do next with the terrific Occipital brain trust.
[ BTW, you can download the newly FREE RedLaser app here: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa... ]
heyrich
23 Jun 10 at 9:32 pm
Congrats, guys!
Jeremy
23 Jun 10 at 9:37 pm
Congrats lads…awesome news!!!
Steve Gotz
23 Jun 10 at 10:16 pm
rock on guys
ap_
23 Jun 10 at 10:26 pm
[...] Another TechStars company has been acquired. Well – part of it has been acquired. Today it was announced that eBay has acquired the RedLaser product from Occipital. The Occipital guys tell the story in their post titled Arrival at the Launchpad. [...]
eBay Acquired RedLaser
23 Jun 10 at 6:06 pm
wtg guys, great news! Stoked to see what a return to engineering roots will produce!
Al Doan
24 Jun 10 at 12:07 am
Awesome CONGRATS GUYS!
danmayer
24 Jun 10 at 12:11 am
By the way I was wearing my Occipital shirt today so appropriate.
danmayer
24 Jun 10 at 12:12 am
Go Blue! Nice work guys. You totally deserve it. Can't wait to see what's next…
Josh
24 Jun 10 at 2:39 am
Awesome news. You guys really are an inspiration.
Scott Yates
24 Jun 10 at 4:50 am
Nice job. Congratulations.
Neil Simon
24 Jun 10 at 5:14 am
So proud of you guys. Can't wait to see what you come up with next. The quality of everything you've done so far is stunning.
David G. Cohen
24 Jun 10 at 5:42 am
Cheers!
Bowei
24 Jun 10 at 8:03 am
Congrats! Nobody deserves it more than you guys.
Ben Brinckerhoff
24 Jun 10 at 1:53 pm
Way to go Jeff and Vikas! So happy about the news and excited you now have all the resources you need to focus on your true passion.
Krista
24 Jun 10 at 2:16 pm
Congrats from another TechStars team! This is amazing!
davidmit
24 Jun 10 at 4:37 pm
Congrats guys! Under the watchful eye of OBE-1, Occipital is going to do awesome
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Go Rémi, Go!
Moez
21 Jul 10 at 9:19 pm
The barcode deciphering algorithm in RedLaser is simply fantastic … I was extremely happy with Red Laser – I hope eBay continues to maintain it as a development platform for others to use
Thank you.
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